The statement is a broad conditional warning rather than a precise, time‑bounded forecast, which makes it hard to score.

On the one hand, much analysis since 2023 supports Sacks’s general picture of an emerging multipolar order in which the U.S. finds it harder to advance its interests and manage security across multiple crises. The Munich Security Report describes a shift from a U.S.-led unipolar system toward “multipolarization,” with rising powers gaining influence as U.S. hegemony declines and publics fearing a more conflict‑prone world.【2†turn2search3】 Commentators argue U.S. global leadership and conflict‑management capacity have eroded, pointing to difficulties influencing outcomes in Ukraine and the Israel–Hamas/Gaza conflict and a wider perception of American decline.【2†turn2search2】【2†turn2search4】 Other pieces explicitly say American foreign policy is “lost” or ill‑adapted in a multipolar environment, highlighting overstretch and mismatches between goals and resources across Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Indo‑Pacific.【1†turn1search4】【2†turn2search6】 U.S. involvement in overlapping crises such as the Ukraine war, the Gaza war, and the Red Sea/Houthi confrontation—which Washington itself has described as its largest naval engagement since World War II—illustrates the kind of complex, multi‑theatre strain Sacks was worried about.【1†turn1search16】【1†turn1search17】

On the other hand, both parts of the conditional are contestable. First, U.S. policy has mixed elements of escalation and de‑escalation: extensive military aid and sanctions in some theatres, but also sustained efforts to avoid direct NATO–Russia war, manage crises with China, support or pressure for ceasefires, and in 2025 even pausing military aid to Ukraine partly to push negotiations.【1†turn1search15】 It is not clear that the antecedent (“if we do not look for ways to de‑escalate conflict”) is cleanly satisfied. Second, there is no consensus that the U.S. is simply “having a really tough time” in a way that clearly exceeds what one would expect in any great‑power role: the same Munich Security material and mainstream IR scholarship emphasize that the U.S. still accounts for roughly 40% of global defense spending, commands a unique alliance network, and in some views remains the sole superpower rather than one pole among many.【2†turn2search1】【2†turn2search15】 Other analysts argue that, while U.S. influence is relatively declining, it can still navigate or even shape a multipolar order if it adjusts its grand strategy appropriately, rather than being doomed to fail.【1†turn1search3】【2†turn2search0】

Because (a) the time frame (“over the coming years”) is open‑ended, (b) key terms like “really tough time” and “multipolar world” are qualitative and interpreted very differently across reputable sources, and (c) it is unclear whether the conditional’s premise about U.S. de‑escalation behavior is actually met, the prediction cannot be cleanly judged as either right or wrong. It fits some critical narratives of U.S. difficulties, but is not decisively confirmed or falsified by the available evidence, so the fairest score is ambiguous.